Chapter 270: Taking on a Disciple? Not Interested

The endless acid rain hammered the rusted iron sheets, dripping with a constant patter.

A Qi listened to the voice beside his ear, swallowed, his voice trembling: 'Who… who exactly are you? Are you a hacker implanted into my auditory nerves?'

'A hacker?'

Gu Yuan's soul hovered in midair, transmitting via divine sense: 'I… suppose I come from the immortal realm; in terms you can understand, you may call me an immortal.'

A Qi gaped, speechless.

Rainwater slid down his grimy cheeks into his mouth, bitter and astringent.

He stared for a full half minute, then scrambled upright, lowering his voice: 'You're an immortal?! Impossible—immortals died out long ago!'

Gu Yuan raised an eyebrow; that was a novel claim.

'Died out? Who did it?'

A Qi wiped the mud from his face, his tone firm with certainty: 'This is history written into the compulsory-education crystal cores. Three thousand years ago, the four major conglomerates jointly launched the Purify World Agreement.'

The history crystal cores say that traditional cultivators who rely on meditation and ceaselessly plunder the world's creation are tumors parasitic on the planet.

To achieve their own immortality, they forcibly drained the spiritual essence of rivers, lakes, and seas, causing ordinary people to suffer year‑long natural disasters, with corpses littering the wilderness.

To save the masses, the pioneers of the four conglomerates secretly gathered the finest mechanical technology and erected the Star River Spirit‑Gathering Sphere that blankets the sky.

Taking advantage of the lofty immortals in retreat within their blessed grottoes, they instantly severed the planet's ley‑line circulation, highly compressed the siphoned spiritual energy, and condensed it into a 'Dharma‑Extinguishing Spirit Energy Bullet' that annihilates everything.

In that battle, ninety‑nine percent of the immortals were blown to smithereens in retreat; the rest, depleted of spiritual energy, went berserk and were finally wiped out by the conglomerates' mechanical armies.

Thus the 'Old Era Immortals' were utterly eradicated; the conglomerates ended the dark age of immortal hegemony, declared that spiritual energy was no longer a privileged few's right, and inaugurated a bright new era of spiritual‑energy crystallization and universal mechanical ascension.

Gu Yuan listened to his words, remaining silent.

Too formulaic.

A Qi's reply.

It has the victors depict the cruelty of the vanquished ruling the world, granting the victors' subversion of the vanquished absolute moral righteousness.

He was hardly different from A Qi arguing about anything.

He unfurled that wisp of half‑step Immortal King–level divine sense without reservation.

The intangible ripple swept over the trash hills, past the air‑purification towers of the slums, shot straight into the clouds, and instantly enveloped the entire Heavenly Axis Eleven City.

The strongest person in the city was a Nascent Soul cultivator.

Converted to the strength of the Primeval Immortal Realm, that's roughly around the seventh realm.

Outside the city, however, there is a high‑altitude orbit.

On that orbit, tens of thousands of massive mechanical devices are arranged in a specific formation.

It is an extremely crude yet enormously vast spirit‑gathering matrix that boggles the mind.

The planet's internal ley‑line spiritual energy, which should circulate endlessly, is forcibly extracted and compressed by these devices, finally flowing into the private treasuries of the four major conglomerates.

Monopolizing resources, sealing off the path of ascent.

This is even harsher than what the demonic cultivators of the Primeval Immortal Realm do.

'Calling the plunder of heaven and earth a tumor, while they build an even bigger pump.'

Gu Yuan did not hide the mockery in his tone,

'The manners of this bunch of merchants are uglier than those of the demonic cultivators in the lower realm.'

A Qi didn't understand what a demonic cultivator was; he only knew that this invisible presence before him had just accurately pinpointed the location of the crystal core.

In this man‑eating wasteland, anything that brings profit—even a devil—must be seized.

He dropped to his knees in the muddy water, facing the unseen presence, and kowtowed deeply:

'Whether you are an immortal or a hacker, please take me as your disciple! I don't want to go down the mines; I just want to survive!'

'Take on a disciple?'

Gu Yuan firmly refused,

'Your aptitude… however, since we've just met, I'll skip the formal teacher‑student rites and pass you a preservation method—no harm done.'

A technique entitled *Primordial Breath‑Inducing Chapter* was directly imprinted onto A Qi's memory cortex.

It's a basic introductory method copied from who‑knows‑where.

Even the collateral disciples of the Gu Family disdain it for its low utility rate.

A Qi closed his eyes and roughly scanned the new information flooding his mind.

The passages on meridian circulation and the great heavenly circuit were obscure and hard to grasp for him, a penniless pauper who couldn't afford a neural interface.

Yet he keenly grasped the core logic of this method: it needs no external crystal core, drawing energy directly from all things.

'Good heavens…' A Qi sucked in a cold breath, his voice trembling, 'This… this is at least a fifth‑tier technique!'

'A fifth‑tier technique? What's the grading standard?'

A Qi grew so excited his words tumbled out incoherently:

'Technique rank is tied to mechanical modification rate! Only when over seventy percent of one's bones and organs are replaced with the conglomerates' special cultivation prosthetics, and a crystal core of fifth tier or higher is installed, can one achieve this heavenly‑circuit rotation speed!'

'Such tier‑level technique crystal cores fetch astronomical prices on the black market; only conglomerate executives are worthy to use them!'

Gu Yuan was utterly speechless.

The human body is a great treasury.

Even if one is merely a mortal, this holds true.

To discard this innate Dao‑body of flesh and trade it for a heap of scrap copper and iron, yet still feel one has gotten a tremendous bargain.

Cultivation is meant to transcend life and death and achieve feathered ascension to immortality.

These folks, however, have remade themselves into half‑human, half‑machine monsters just to boost that pitiful spiritual‑energy conversion rate a little.

'The human body has three hundred sixty‑five major apertures, secretly corresponding to the heavenly bodies of the celestial circuit. By cutting away your flesh and replacing it with machinery, you are severing your Dao foundation. Well, go ahead and retreat into seclusion—I'd like to see just how the cultivators of this world differ from those of my realm.'

Gu Yuan said no more.

And A Qi also didn't dare to refute, sitting cross-legged honestly in the muddy water.

He closed his eyes, following the guidance of the Primordial Guide to Drawing Qi, trying to sense the surrounding spiritual energy.

The rain fell even harder.

The neon sign in the distance shattered into variegated color patches in the puddles.

A Qi's breathing gradually steadied, but his brow furrowed ever tighter.

The environment was too harsh.

Ninety-nine percent of the spiritual energy had been drained away.

Even though the cultivation method Gu Yuan provided was considered top-tier in this world.

But without spiritual energy, or rather, being unable to capture spiritual energy, one remains rootless duckweed.

Even reaching the first realm is difficult!

Gu Yuan observed from a high position.

The degeneration of the carbon-based body far exceeded expectations.

The conglomerate's monopoly not only drained spiritual energy, but also subtly altered the genes of the lower-class humans.

They had grown accustomed to relying on spirit crystals and nutrient fluid, and their innate Dao bodies had long since degenerated into waste.

At this rate, even if A Qi sat here until death, he could not break through to the third realm.

"Alright, stop now."

Gu Yuan spoke up to interrupt.

A Qi opened his eyes, face full of shame and despair.

He knew he had failed.

Without spirit crystals, he simply couldn't 'absorb spiritual energy, comprehend heaven and earth, and draw qi into the body' as the method describes.

"It's not the method's problem; it's that your body is too broken."

Gu Yuan's tone was utterly calm.

He slightly focused his mind, via the system, and invested a high-grade spirit stone.

This is already the best Gu Yuan can find; after all, it's a cultivation resource suited for such ordinary people.

Any other resource, even a drop, would leave A Qi unable to withstand it and cause instant death.

A ripple imperceptible to the naked eye spread through the void.

Plop.

A thumb-sized stone emitting a soft white light fell into the muddy water before him.

"Hold it and circulate the method again."

A Qi carefully picked up the stone.

As soon as it entered his hand, a warm, rich energy surged from his palm straight to his head.

He had never come into contact with the highest grade—a piece of third-tier heavenly-grade spirit crystal—in his life!

But the spirit crystal selling for 10,000 credit points seems even inferior to this stone!

He didn't dare hesitate, closing his eyes again to circulate the Primordial Guide to Drawing Qi.

This time, there was no obstruction.

Majestic spiritual energy, like a bursting dam flood, violently burst open those shrunken, blocked meridians.

Bones emitted fine cracking sounds; impurities within the body exited through the pores, turning into a layer of black, foul-smelling grime.

Gu Yuan extended a strand of divine sense to protect A Qi's fragile meridians, lest this kid explode and die.

Meanwhile, during his breakthrough,

Gu Yuan's divine sense never ceased, as he probed this world.

He soon discovered an interesting place.